J. has a roller derby game this weekend, so I thought I’d dig up something, anything that involves roller skates. I’ve drawn roller girls a few times, and never really felt like I got it. I think I should make like Wile E. Coyote and push my next attempt as far as it will go. That’s some great posing there.

I was never that big a fan of the Road Runner when I was a kid. In other Warner Bros. cartoons, the dialogue combined with the animation played off of one another to raise the quality of both. That said, I had an assignment in college where I had to animate a scene with Wile E., and it certainly increased my appreciation for what the animators of the Golden Age were able to achieve. Wile E. may be the least appreciated character design to come out of Warner Bros. I love how mangy he looks with all his little tufts of matted fur, and how he has that huge torso that makes him look like a hunchback and accentuates his tiny, malnourished stomach. They really nailed him right out the gate.

What’s wrong with me? Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies are not only my favourite cartoons, but serious contenders for my favourite pieces of cinema ever. Yet this is the second Warner Bros. cartoon in a row to leave me a little disappointed. And a Clampett cartoon at that.

At first I thought the reason could be that madman animator Rod Scribner had left Termite Terrace by that point, but the scene right before the robbery seems to be his work, and is arguably the best part of the short. Ryder’s constant, floppy movement has to be one of the greatest representations of pure stupidity in the history of cartoons. And the horse was wonderful, alternating between righteous determination and total panic. Outside of that, nothing really seemed to gel. Recycled gags, plenty of filler, an especially antagonistic Bugs beating up on an idiot, and a scenario stripped down to the essentials. Chuck Jones pulled off that kind of minimalism all the time, but with Clampett I always expect a constant barrage of zany ideas, one after another.

That, or my expectations going into a Clampett cartoon are a little high.

This was a favourite on the playground when I was a kid, due almost entirely to the Snowman’s highly quotable lines. I wonder if Chuck Jones got a perverse pleasure out of knowing that children everywhere were repeating a bastardized homage to Of Mice And Men.

Despite that, upon revisiting it I can’t say that The Abominable Snow Rabbit has much else going for it. You can kind of tell that this was made when Warner Bros. animation was on the decline. In fact, this was Jones’ final cartoon involving Daffy, so it’s fitting that outside of the voice work his expressions are the best thing about the short. I think that because he was such a louse there was so much more you could do with Daffy as opposed to Bugs, who was usually so unflappable.